Just finished my first ever paying book cover design! It’s nice when dead presidents can validate your meager attempts at art.

Thanks to Shawn Smucker for giving me a chance. It was a pleasure, despite the fact that it took me around 30 hours to create from start to finish.

I began by creating fonts out of faux feathers & real raffia (palm), built a nest out of raffia and sliced-up sentences from Shawn’s book, as well as faux feathers, papered an egg with sentences from Shawn’s book, and celebrated the completion of my creation this a.m. by scrambling the egg and eating it.

An egg that is covered in glued strips of paper is not easily broken. 

The book cover is for Shawn’s forthcoming book about becoming a full-time writer, and it features essays from Jason Boyett, Ken Mueller, Kristin Tennant, Andi Cumbo, Stacy Barton,Bryan Allain, Jeff Goins, Jennifer Perrine Luitwieler, and Ed Cyzewski. Details about the book’s release are forthcoming.

Thanks to Becki Johnston, Danny Joe Gibson, and Mark van Dyk for their invaluable input. 

Below is the alternate cover, and the one I probably prefer personally, although the one above showcases the feather font I created a little better.